


Whumptober 2020 No. 12

by Sapless_Tree



Series: MacGyver Whumptober [8]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016) Whump, Broken Bones, Gen, Hurt Angus Macgyver (Macgyver 2016), No. 12, Whumptober, Whumptober 2020, macgyver whump, sfw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:02:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27231679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sapless_Tree/pseuds/Sapless_Tree
Summary: Whumptober no. 12 "I Think I've Broken Something"Prompt: broken bonesMac was slapped around for another few minutes before the man seemed to register that Mac was in too much pain to provide even useless sass. And so with a decisive blow to Mac’s chest, the man left the blond on his own, with the threat of more pain coming in clear through the haze of agony.
Relationships: Jack Dalton & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016), No Romantic Relationship(s)
Series: MacGyver Whumptober [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1999582
Comments: 8
Kudos: 45
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Whumptober 2020 No. 12

**Author's Note:**

> Hi hello, I skipped a day bc I didn't like the prompt. Maybe I'll go back to it if I'm feeling particularly inspired, but, uh, probably not. 
> 
> Enjoy!!

Their plans never really did go how they were supposed to. That was just the nature of the job-- there was always something that had been overlooked, new information gained, or just an unlucky wrench thrown into strategies. 

It was a simple drug bust of a cartel that had been flying under Colombia’s government and Cali local police radars for months-- the Cali Cartel was attempting to resurface under the guise of a denim manufacturer. There were several facilities producing and illegally selling cocaine underneath their denim factories, and it had only come to the United States’ attention as the rate the drug was being smuggled into the country from the handoff site in Mexico had increased quickly. With Colombia being such a valuable trade partner, the United States government didn’t want to risk getting officially involved-- they sent Phoenix in. 

Mac normally enjoyed the ever-changing ambiguity that his job brought to his life. Sure, it put him and his team in some danger, but improvising and coming up with creative solutions on the spot is where he excelled. He may have even appreciated how things had gone askew this time. 

But, Mac was sure, he would appreciate it all more if his head wasn’t currently being held underwater.

Mac struggled against the large man holding him by the hair and crushing his body against the tank of water. He thrashed as the need to breathe grew stronger-- he knew that struggling just used up what little oxygen he had from the small shuddery gasp he drew in before he’d dunked him under, but his instinctive need to struggle away from the water won out over his mind.

It seemed like an eternity before he was pulled back up, sputtering and coughing water out of his mouth. Mac’s lungs were burning as he drew in desperate gasps.

“Are you ready to tell me who you work for?” The man asked, tugging Mac’s hair by the fistful he had in hand.

Mac worked to slow his ragged breaths-- he was sure he’d taken in some water by the odd rasp he could clearly hear.

“Not ready to talk yet? That’s unfortunate,” the man said. Mac sucked in as deep a breath as he could before his head was thrust back into the water. He held as still as he could, but the horrible burning in his lungs screamed at him to breathe. His lungs ached and ribs hurt, being pressed against the tank so harshly. The man punched Mac’s side with his free hand, forcing all of the air out of his lungs. 

Mac barely resisted the urge to gasp. 

Water was in his nostrils and in his mouth. Dark spots crept around the edges of Mac’s vision and he thrashed again. The man held him still, waiting until his struggling was subdued by the lack of oxygen before pulling him up again. 

Mac frantically blinked away the water from his eyes and gagged on the water in his mouth, clearing it from his throat so he could wheeze in a few breaths. The man was talking again-- Mac didn’t care. He was too focused on breathing.

The man’s hand clutched at Mac’s blond hair tighter, and for a moment Mac thought that he was going to be shoved underwater again, spotty vision, choked breaths, and all. 

But the water didn't come. 

Instead, Mac was thrust to the ground and a heavy boot kicked into his abdomen. He couldn’t help but curl up as the man kicked him again, knocking whatever air he was able to get into his lungs right back out.

“Who do you work for?” He barked, hitting Mac again. 

“Ph--” Mac let out a harsh cough “physically coercive interrogation has been…” he sucked in a ragged breath “has been proven to-- to incite false confessions and fabricated intel.” A wave of pain shot through Mac as the man kicked him again-- there was a _crack_ after the next kick. Mac couldn’t help but yelp in pain.

“That is not what I asked,” the man said. “I don’t want a lesson on how to handle prisoners. I want to know who you are and who sent you. _Now_.”

Mac clutched protectively at the side where his rib had broken. “All I’m saying is...” he wheezed, “that I don’t know anything. And-- and even if I did, you can’t trust any information I give you…” The man’s angry expression deepened as Mac spoke. “People will… people in pain usually tell you what you want to hear-- even if it’s not true.”

Spent with Mac’s talking the man bent down close to him, pressing a hand down hard where the blond’s broken rib was. Mac let out a hiss of pain at the pressure. The man put more weight into it.

“You will tell me the truth, or you will suffer greatly for your resistance.” 

Horrible waves of pain washed over Mac every time he breathed in-- between the spasms in his trachea and the force being applied to his chest, Mac’s vision faded back to spotty as stars danced across his line of sight. He couldn’t get a proper breath in. It hurt.

The man demanded information again, but Mac couldn’t respond even if he’d wanted to. But his tormenter was growing restless with Mac’s uncooperative behavior.

“Answer me, now,” he spat. After silence from Mac, the man let up off his chest. The rush of available air left Mac dizzy, but the relief didn’t last long as he heard the man dragging something over.

A metal pipe was brought close to Mac and the man held the blond’s left leg down. Mac tried to struggle out of the grip when the pipe was held up over him but found he couldn't get out of the firm grip.

“Last time I’ll ask nicely. Who sent you?”

“You did,” Mac choked out, smirking as he recalled the lines from the second Terminator movie; he and Jack had rewatched the first three a few days before the mission. He hoped he was doing his partner proud as he continued, “35 years from now yo--” the quote was cut short as soon as the man realized what Mac was doing. 

The metal pipe was slammed down onto his left shin. _Hard._

There was a snap. The pain was explosive, and Mac screamed. 

Tears pricked at the edges of Mac’s eyes, but he blinked them away quickly, refusing to cry in front of that man. Mac yelped again as the man let go of his leg. It was less because it had been jostled and more because of the wave of pain that washed over his leg.

The man was speaking, threatening him. He could vaguely hear the question asked again, but all Mac could concentrate on was the pain radiating from his leg and the tightness of his chest. Mac lifted his head a little to get a look at his leg; it was already swelling, going a deep red-purple that was sure to only darken further. It was definitely broken. 

Mac was slapped around for another few minutes before the man seemed to register that Mac was in too much pain to provide even useless sass. And so with a decisive blow to Mac’s chest, the man left the blond on his own, with the threat of more pain coming in clear through the haze of agony.

He groaned, moving the toes of his left leg experimentally. He cried out-- it hurt like hell, but he could move it. Maybe he’d gotten lucky and only sustained a hairline fracture. But when had Mac ever been lucky? He moved them once again, pain flaring up as he did.

When the man had left, Mac hadn’t paid attention to whether or not the door had been locked. Pushing himself up on his elbows, Mac slowly sat up, breathing hard and ragged through it. 

The room wasn’t completely empty; there was the tank of water that he’d been held under, of course, but in addition to that, the man had left the metal pipe. There were other things littered in there as well-- it looked as though it must have been an extra storage room that the reemerging cartel had hastily thrown together as an interrogation room 

Mac carefully scooted himself towards the door. He did his best to not jostle his throbbing leg, but couldn’t help the gasps and grunts of pain as it dragged across the uneven floor. Steeling himself and clenching his teeth, Mac knew he’d have to get up to reach the door handle. 

A breath turned into a coughing fit, but once that was under control he clenched his fists and hoisted himself up off the ground was a shout. He gripped the door handle for support, merely standing there and breathing through the pain, but when he tried the door, he’d found it locked. 

‘ _Easy fix,_ ’ Mac thought, looking around the room quickly. His eyes landed on the metal pipe on the floor-- it wouldn’t help any with the door, but it did make for a good weapon. Even better than that, it would probably make for a decent crutch.

Mac hobbled to the pipe, groaning every time he put any kind of weight on his leg. It didn’t collapse under him-- that was a good sign-- but that didn’t make it hurt any less. 

With the pipe in his possession and supporting most of the weight of his left side, Mac took stock of the room once again, looking for something to pick the door’s lock with. It was just a simple lock, by the looks of it. So once he spotted the toothpick on the floor, the hardest part about opening the door was bending over to retrieve the toothpick. He stuck it into the lock and it slid open easily. 

There was no sign of the man or any other cartel members. That either meant they'd all decided to go take a break at the same time (not likely) or their attention was needed for something up in the cover denim factory (Mac hoped that it was Jack and a TAC team armed to the teeth and ready to retrieve him, but he still had to be careful-- just in case).

Mac tried to be as silent as he could be while exiting the room. The metal pipe made walking a little easier on his leg, but it still ached. The metal pipe clanged against the ground noisily with every step, and Mac couldn’t keep quiet all the noises of pain he made while walking.

He wouldn’t get far like that. He needed a splint, a better crutch, and a plan. And, looking around the cocaine manufacturing floor, he realized he had access to something a little better than a splint.

Passing by the fresh coca leaves that had been left on the tables to dry, Mac made his way over to where the cocaine had been a bit further along in production. There was pure cocaine-- it looked like someone had abandoned it as they were cutting it, leaving some of it properly powdery, and the rest solid. 

Gathering up a decent amount of the powdered cocaine, Mac found a bucket (it had had cleaning supplies in it, and ordinarily that in it of itself would have been a goldmine to Mac, but all he wanted was the bucket) and put the powdered cocaine in it. He searched the place for a moment before finding a cartel member’s half-empty bottle of water. Unscrewing it, Mac took a whiff, making sure that it was, in fact, water. 

Mac took the water and looked around for a few moments more. He spotted a small table of what looked like personal items, no doubt belonging to the cartel members. His swiss army knife was there, so he took it and pocketed it, along with someone’s moisturizer and an old lighter.

There were a few items that might’ve been good for a simple splint, but there were still no cartel members in sight, and Mac planned to use that to its full advantage while he could. With all the cocaine, he could easily make a plaster cast for himself, to keep his leg even better stabilized. 

Maybe he _was_ lucky some of the time.

Snatching a container of coca paste off of one of the production tables, he slowly lowered himself to the ground, stretching his bad leg out. He pressed his hands around the break, wincing in pain as he did; he was feeling around the bone, but it didn’t seem to be displaced.

So he went ahead and cut the pant leg off, and began to apply the coca paste to his leg. 

Mac applied the coca paste in thin layers all the way around his leg in order to let it dry quickly as he made the cast mold. Each paper-thin layer of the putty-like coca paste took several minutes to dry, but waving the flame of the lighter he’d taken near the paste made it dry more quickly. 

Eventually, enough layers had been built up, and Mac was happy with the plaster mold, he used his swiss army knife and cut the mold along the sides, leaving him with a top half and a bottom half to make his cast in. 

Pouring the water in with the powdered cocaine, Mac mixed it until he got a consistency he was happy with. He spread a thin layer of the stolen oil-based moisturizer on the inside of both sides of the cast mold (to keep it from sticking) before pressing the water-cocaine mixture into the mold in small, thin strips along the mold’s curve of his leg.

Those took longer to dry, even with the lighter, he was sure it was about ten minutes before the curved strips had dried enough for him to pull them out of the mold. 

But once he was able, Mac cut the removed pant leg into strips and tied a few around the part of his leg where the bruise was darkest, wincing as he did. He tied an extra few strips around the site as well, not having much in the way of insulation for inside the makeshift cast he was about to apply, and hoped it would do.

Satisfied with his work, he took the curved strips of hardened cocaine-plaster and put it on his leg. Mac adhered the separate strips together by applying more of the thick water-cocaine mixture onto where the seams of the separate pieces met. He did this for all of the strips he’d made, and then again when he applied the underside of the cast. Finally, he added a layer of the mixture along the sides of the cast, effectively sealing the thing wholly around his leg.

Dried and hardened, the cast he’d made for himself held up okay, staying in place when he’d tried to move it around. It wasn’t perfect-- and it definitely wasn’t pretty-- but it would keep his leg sturdy and supported until he could get a real cast from a doctor.

Mac moved his toes again, groaning in pain as he did. It was good he could still move them-- he hadn’t applied the cast too tight-- but his leg shot waves of throbbing pain through him.

He was beginning to worry that he hadn’t heard a thing from the cartel members upstairs. Surely there had to be something going on up there, he knew that his cast had taken at least thirty minutes to finish, if not longer. 

So why hadn’t they come back down? And if it was Phoenix coming for him-- why hadn’t _they_ come down?

Deciding to count his blessings instead of worrying about whether or not the Cali Cartel had forgotten he was down there, Mac started on the crutch. It was far easier to make the crutch with all the spare things laying around than it had been to make the cast, and for that, Mac was grateful. 

By the time he had finished it all and was back on his feet (well, foot and crutch, anyway), his cracked rib was screaming for attention. Attention that he didn’t have time to give it, judging by the commotion he was beginning to hear from up in the denim factory portion of the building. 

Mac limped towards the stairs, groaning through the pain of walking and even yelping a few times that he’d put a little too much weight on his left leg. 

The noise was coming through louder, more clearly. There was no mistaking the worried Texan drawl shouting something and the gunshots that followed. 

“Jack!” Mac shouted, immediately regretting it when it threw him into a coughing fit. He yelled again anyway, “I’m down here!”

He wasn’t sure if anyone could hear him from up there, so Mac slowly began to force himself up the stairs. He took it one step at a time, agonizingly slow and having to stop every third step to breathe through the horrible pain screaming out at him from his leg and side. 

Mac had gotten up almost all of the stairs when the door flew open. 

_That wasn’t Jack._

One of the cartel members had swung the door open and was going to rush down the stairs. Mac guessed the man hadn’t counted on someone being there, because he ran right into the blond. Neither had any time to react and they both went tumbling down the stairs. Mac thought maybe he shouted when the white-hot pain flared through his leg, and he was vaguely aware of Jack shouting and footsteps coming down the stairs quickly. 

The two hit the floor, the cartel member on top swiftly pushing off of Mac and making a run for it. Two gunshots rang out and the man fell right back to the ground. 

“Mac! Mac-- there you are, are you okay?!” Jack asked, immediately crouching down next to his hurt partner. Mac nodded, and Jack spoke again. “Yeah, Matty-- yeah, I got him… took a header down the stairs, I’m bringin’ him up.”

“Matty came?” Mac asked through a wheeze. The fall had definitely not been kind to his broken rib or throbbing leg.

“She’s here in spirit, kid,” he said, tapping his comms. “Come on, can you move?”

“Yeah,” Mac said, taking another moment before pushing himself up into a sitting position with a grunt. Jack, ever fine-tuned to Mac’s silent (and not-so-silent) pleas for assistance, moved to help him.

“The hell’s on your leg, brother?” Jack asked as he helped guide Mac slowly to his feet.

Mac leaned heavily on the older agent, still not confident in putting much weight on his left leg. “Cast,” he said, “leg’s broken.”

“Broken?! Well, that’s that then, hoss, You’re not walking. All aboard the Jack express-- I’m gonna carry you.” He was already moving to grab the blond, but Mac stopped him, a laugh phasing out into a painful cough.

“No, no Jack I can walk. It’s fine, I made a crutch.” The look Jack shot Mac was one he was more than familiar with. The ‘you’re-not-fine-let-me-help-you’ look that Jack could never quite seem to shake off his face whenever his partner was hurt or in trouble. “Fine,” Mac said, reading the face easily, “Just help me walk, then? You’re not carrying me.”

“Okay, but if it starts hurting you worse, I can’t promise that I won’t sweep you right off your feet and bridal style you all the way back to California.” 

Mac laughed. “Sure, whatever. Let’s just go. I want to get home and sleep for a week.”

“That’s cute, Mac,” Jack said, “but you’re going right to medical when we get out of here.”

Mac sighed with a smile as the two started moving, keeping up his faux exasperation with a playful eye roll despite how grateful he was for his partner. 

And as the two headed out, Mac found that Jack made a better crutch than anything he could cobble together.

**Author's Note:**

> So I read an article about someone that made a cast out of cocaine and was like ...Mac would do that... and thus I tried to fit an entire plot around that one thing I read. The articles didn't even say how the guy did it either, so I googled a buncha stuff about cocaine production and threw some magical fic bs together.
> 
> Mostly, the drying time would be muuuuch slower, the lighter really wouldn't make much of a difference. I tried to act like thin layers would reduce that time too, but it probably wouldn't do so by very much. 
> 
> Plaster molds, according to the article I was reading are made of "gypsum, strengthening compounds, and water." Only one of those things would've been reasonably available, and idk what "strengthening compounds" is, so I substituted gypsum for coca paste since both are sulfuric. That doesn't necessarily mean they would behave the same way, but I figured it was good enough.
> 
> I changed up the cast application process a little as well, usually, the pieces are already made and you just have to wet them, wrap, and then wait for it to dry/harden, but because they were being hand-made (out of cocaine) and I didn't think there would reasonably be enough fabric to soak in in the cocaine-water to make strips to wrap (plus drying time that I was already pushing) what you're seeing is nOt proper cast application. That doesn't bother me that much tho tbh.
> 
> Okay yeah, there's a couple other little things just bc I don't really fully understand the process of making cocaine-- the articles were good im just slow lmao-- but all in all, I think I covered the main stuff that'll be obvious to anyone willing to do more research than yours truly
> 
> Oh! one more tidbit, the Cali Cartel was actually a real cartel but it was brought down years ago sooo I figured it was fair game for a fic (the show used the zodiac killer for an ep dont @ me)


End file.
